Compañeros part 2
General Summary
Grolm 13, 578
Ten minutes after Pitch Noon!
Ten minutes after Pitch Noon!
Menaces abound!
Having stuffed Emory "Ranger" Horn into Sarsparilla Barn where maybe the resident barn not-exactly-a-cat will look after him, Jesse Devonshire wildshaped into a juvenile Woolly Rhinoceros with -- unlike Dagnabbit -- properly developed horns. "Jessnabbit" is six feet seven inches at the shoulder. He weighs fifty-two hundred pounds. He is covered in shaggy fur, white and ruddy brown. He has a subconical posterior horn centered between his eyes and a much longer, shamshir-like anterior horn protruding from the top of his snoot.
A Giant Bee rides Jessnabbit's hump into battle!
Bruthazmus wades northward into the prairie thicket. He meant to follow the sounds of dire coyote, hell bovine, and plant sorcerer locked in mortal combat. Someone's got to back Miro up, right?
There's always another interruption!
This time, it's the banshee of the Storm Shepherd, suddenly flickering in and out of sight in Bruthazmus' shadow.
Yathue Ilphendurl overextended herself when she channeled her god's stern benediction upon the region. She does not dare move more than ten, maybe fifteen feet away from the relic of her faith, tucked into Bruthazmus's vest pocket. She will fragment if she does, crumble apart like a weeks-old crust of snow on an exposed ledge.
She's having trouble holding onto Wul'Jairsor, which belongs much more to the physical world than she ever will again.
Worse and worse, she can feel death coiling itself up like a serpent in three different baskets. There's the one far beyond hearing, more than a hundred twenty feet northward in the fog. There's the one maybe twenty feet east, where Miro-as-coyote pits one foe against another. There's the one inside Sarsparilla Bunkhouse, back behind Yathue and Bruthazmus both.
Miro Teague practices his snipe-and-dodge-away tactics as both EvilSeed and a Hell Bovine try to kill him. Fortunately they also try to kill one another, which may give Miro a few good openings!
Shapes loom in the fog, big and tiny, from every direction except where he remembers Gate One to be. Normally Miro can see through the fog. He is Stormborn, after all! But there's the sputtering smoke of the burning haystacks. There is glimmering snow falling all around the late summer afternoon. The world smells of ash and sulfur and rot to Miro's overwhelmed coyote nose.
Inside Sarsparilla Bunkhouse, it is snowing.
A Hell Hand who called himself "Faith" stands in the bedroom doorway, blocking Zhang Sephia's best route out. Every muscle in his whipcord frame is locked tight. The demon inside fights with all its fiendish power to force the man into a deed he despises: to murder the harpy ranger. Or, worse, to incapacitate her for his liege's use.
Culinary duo Lee Chung and his apprentice Chef are close to the exit door. They are in terrible danger. Not just from the snow slickening the floor, or from the strange reactions of the herbs as the snow dusts over each leaf. They are in danger because a Power is aware of them ... and suspects them of being connected to the divine snowfall!
The long version of the Previouslies:
Each member of the SNAFU Posse picks up on the same map they were in at the end of Part 1, with Zhang Sephia, Chef, and Lee Chung inside Sarsparilla Bunkhouse and everyone else close to Gate One.
Missions/Quests Completed
- EvilSeed has been killed once again!
He had time in which to have concealed the seed of his resurrection somewhere on Sarsparilla Ranch, most likely in the area east of Sarsparilla Barn or else north of that thicket patch. Would he have planted his future near Gate One, which he intended to dismantle?
His youngest Griefgalls are ejecting lethally from the bodies of their new hosts. Unless Zhang Sephia has another brilliant strategy in her quiver, the soil will soon be enriched with the bodies of Harp Hess, Justice Mullins, and Mystery Mullins.
- Liberata Pasquarella has been rescued from the clutches of the Hell Herd! Chef leads her toward the north door to Sarsparilla Barn. Will Tonto the Faithful Cabbage roll into an attack of opportunity?
- Scaevola Aemula lugs Ghost Harrell toward the Green Giant that sprang up thanks to Jesse's plant growth. Ghost fights to make the dryad drop her -- Ghost does not want to leave her husband behind, especially not after hearing a Princess's command to her underling -- but Scaevola Aemula has practice keeping her grasp on an unwilling human.
So long as Lee Chung can keep the Lady of the Choking Smog attacking himself, not chasing down allies, the others should have time to get away!
Character(s) interacted with
- Dkar Po remotely blessed the interior of Sarsparilla Bunkhouse.
- Faith Harrell fought to not interact with Zhang Sephia.
- Ghost Harrell, Liberata Pasquarella of the Bicchieri Caravan, and Scaevola Aemula were under the baleful eye of an otherworldly Princess who rules the Hell Herd in Methurgh's place.
- The Cloven Princess had a pleasant chat with one Posse member, then burdened another under the strictures of hospitality. She still requires the return of her Cloven Prince, currently bottled for convenient shelving.
- Rye Hess died under Jesse's hooves. Harp Hess is dying despite a rhinoceros-based miss.
- Justice and Mystery Mullins are dying of what EvilSeed did to them.
- One Hell Bovine fights to get out of the burning Haystack One. Another Hell Bovine weaves on her hooves, nearly down for the count. A third is dead twenty feet from where Haystack Two used to be!
- She-Seed tried (and failed!) to poison Jesse in his Dagnabbit form.
- Briarseed Children near Haystacks Four and Five hurl offended slights at the harpy ranger.
- The Hesters are desperate to defend the Alstons from four Hell Bovines. Are Hell Hands Bowser Kotabe and Leather Cobb standing guard? Targeting the owner of the ranch? Or something else entirely?
